First edition. Uncommon, OCLC shows just three copies – National Library of the Czech Republic, Toronto Public Library and the Zentralbibliothek Zurich. An account of the development of sport-climbing in Czechoslovakia from training climbs on the sandstone cliffs of Bohemia to a winter ascent of the High Tatras. Heckel originally trained as a portrait photographer, but joined Indusfoto in 1937 and became one of Czechoslovakia’s best -known industrial photographers. In the 1950s he became a freelance, and began climbing, developing a reputation as a highly skilled mountaineer. He died on a climbing expedition to Peru in 1970, and in 1971 the annual Vilém Heckel Peaks photographic competition on the theme of man, nature and the environment was instituted. The present work is among his first publications in the genre of mountaineering photography.

Quarto. Original ecru rough cloth, spine lettered in blue, small vignette of a climbing axe and rucksack to the upper board. Remains of jacket loosely inserted. Largely pictorial, sepia-toned plates. A little rubbed, else very good, tattered remains of the jacket loosely inserted, but the pictorial upper panel is largely complete, a very good copy.